Quotes by Academics

A self that goes on changing is a self that goes on living': so too with the biography of that self. And just as lives don't stay still, so life-writing can't be fixed and finalised. Our ideas are shifting about what can be said, our knowledge of human character is changing. The biographer has to pioneer, going 'ahead of the rest of us, like the miner's canary, testing the atmosphere, detecting falsity, unreality, and the presence of obsolete conventions'. So, 'There are some stories which have to be retold by each generation'. She is talking about the story of Shelley, but she could be talking about her own life-story. (Virginia Woolf, p. 11)
Hermione Lee
Oh no. I split my time between Paris and New York. They're the only places to really live.
Naomi Wood
It was only in a place like Paris where knowing the books someone loved, whether they followed Lévi-Strauss or Sartre, was the yardstick by which to measure them.
Imraan Coovadia
I have always had a weakness for footnotes. For me a clever or a wicked footnote has redeemed many a text. And I see that I am now using a long footnote to open a serious subject - shifting in a quick move to Paris, to a penthouse in the Hotel Crillon. Early June. Breakfast time. The host is my good friend Professor Ravelstein, Abe Ravelstein. My wife and I, also staying at the Crillon, have a room below, on the sixth floor. She is still asleep. The entire floor below ours (this is not absolutely relevant but somehow I can't avoid mentioning it) is occupied just now by Michael Jackson and his entourage. He performs nightly in some vast Parisian auditorium. Very soon his French fans will arrive and a crowd of faces will be turned upward, shouting in unison, 'Miekell Jack-sown'. A police barrier holds the fans back. Inside, from the sixth floor, when you look down the marble stairwell you see Michael's bodyguards. One of them is doing the crossword puzzle in the 'Paris Herald'.
Saul Bellow
Wie Gott in Frankreich'' was the expression used by the Jews of Eastern Europe to describe perfect happiness. I puzzled over this simile for many years, and I think I can interpret it now. God would be perfectly happy in France because he would not be troubled by prayers, observances, blessings and demands for the interpretation of difficult dietary questions. Surrounded by unbelievers He too could relax toward evening, just as thousands of Parisians do at their favorite cafes. There are few things more pleasant, more civilized than a tranquil terrasse at dusk.
Saul Bellow
Science is one of tools God uses to display his power and the optimum potentials He has deposited in man.
David Nii Sowah Kobbina Adjei
By manipulating the physical configuration of [any situation], you make it produce a subset of the infinite pattern of [possibilities]. And even if you don't know how to play [above situation], you can still play with it.
Ian Bogost
Only monsters could slay monsters.
Imraan Coovadia
Our society like decadent Rome has turned into an amusement society with writers chief among the court jesters - not so much above the clatter as part of it.
Saul Bellow
All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.
Saul Bellow
The truth is we've not really developed a fiction that can accommodate the full tumult the zaniness and crazed quality of modern experience.
Saul Bellow
There is today an extraordinary interest with the data of modern experience per se. Our absorption in our contemporary historical state is very high right now. It's not altogether unlike a similar situation in seventeenth century Holland where wealthy merchants wanted their portraits done with all their blemishes included. It is the height of egotism in a sense to think even one's blemishes are of significance. So today Americans seem to want their writers to reveal all their weaknesses their meannesses to celebrate their very confusions. And they want it in the most direct possible way - they want it served up neat as it were without the filtering and generalizing power of fiction.
Saul Bellow
Whether we call it a job or a career work is more than just something we do. It is a part of who we are.
Anita Hill
No task rightly done is truly private. It is part of the world's work.
Woodrow Wilson
It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts - for democracy.
Woodrow Wilson
It is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.
Woodrow Wilson
The efficient man is the man who thinks for himself.
Charles W. Eliot
I'm a vague conjunctured personality more made up of opinions and academic prepossessions than of human traits and red corpuscles.
Woodrow Wilson
It is a secret in the Oxford sense. You may tell it to only one person at a time.
Oliver Franks
Schoolmasters and parents exist to be grown out of.
John Wolfenden
I compensate for big risks by always doing my homework and being well-prepared. I can take on larger risks by reducing the overall risk.
Donna E. Shalala
The value of consistent prayer is not that He will hear us but that we will hear Him.
William McGill
Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.
Woodrow Wilson
Fear drives you and makes you better.
Donna E. Shalala
The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today.
Charles W. Eliot
The value of consistent prayer is not that He will hear us but that we will hear Him.
William McGill
Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.
Woodrow Wilson
Fear drives you and makes you better.
Donna E. Shalala
The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today.
Charles W. Eliot
So many come to the sickroom thinking of themselves as men of science fighting disease and not as healers with a little knowledge helping nature to get a sick man well.
Sir Auckland Geddes
A man is only as good as what he loves.
Saul Bellow
1 have always in my own thought summed up individual liberty and business liberty and every other kind of liberty in the phrase that is common in the sporting world "A free field and no favor."
Woodrow Wilson
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest no domination. We seek no indemnities for ourselves no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely give. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and freedom of nations can make them.
Woodrow Wilson
When you come into the presence of a leader of men you know that you have come into the presence of fire - that it is best not uncautiously to touch that man - that there is something that makes it dangerous to cross him.
Woodrow Wilson
One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils. The thing to do is to supply light and not heat.
Woodrow Wilson
I not only use all the brains I have but all I can borrow.
Woodrow Wilson
A man's rootage is more important than his leafage.
Woodrow Wilson
Be unselfish.... If you think of yourself only you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.
Charles W. Eliot
Provision for others is a fundamental responsibility of human life.
Woodrow Wilson
A friend of mine says that every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells and when I give a man an office I watch him carefully to see whether he is swelling or growing.
Woodrow Wilson
No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States but I never saw the Government of the United States.
Woodrow Wilson
You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.
Woodrow Wilson
Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
Woodrow Wilson
I find the three major administrative problems on a campus are sex for the students athletics for the alumni and parking for the faculty.
Clark Kerr
Schoolmasters and parents exist to be grown out of.
John Wolfenden
On many American campuses the only qualification for admission was the ability actually to find the campus and then discover a parking space.
Malcolm Bradbury
One could get a first-class education from a shelf of books five feet long.
Charles William Eliot
All business proceeds on beliefs or judgment of probabilities and not on certainties.
Charles W. Eliot
All things come to him who waits- provided he knows what he is waiting for.
Woodrow Wilson
The world must be made safe for democracy.
Woodrow Wilson
I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.
Woodrow Wilson
Alternatives and particularly desirable alternatives grow only on imaginary trees.
Saul Bellow
Full maturity ... is achieved by realizing that you have choices to make.
Angela Barron McBride
When Andrew Jackson died someone asked a friend if he thought Old Hickory would go to heaven. 'He will if he wants to ' was the reply. On his death bed Disraeli declined a visit from Queen Victoria. 'No it is better not' he said 'she would only ask me to take a message to Albert.' I am a broken machine. I am ready to go.
Woodrow Wilson
If you want to make enemies try to change something.
Woodrow Wilson
To do things today exactly the way you did them yesterday saves thinking.
Woodrow Wilson
If you think about what you ought to do for other people your character will take care of itself.
Woodrow Wilson
All business proceeds on beliefs on judgements of probabilities and not on certainties.
Charles W. Eliot
The way to stop financial "joy-riding" is to arrest the chauffeur not the automobile.
Woodrow Wilson
Some Americans need hyphens in their names because only part of them has come over but when the whole man has come over heart and thought and all the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name.
Woodrow Wilson